Do Your Surveys Present Your Brand Well?

I stayed at the Chicago Hilton when speaking at SES last week, and had a decent stay. The only flaw was a requested Monday morning wake-up call didn’t occur. This made me almost late for a breakfast meeting. I mentioned this snafu to the front desk. They said “a manager will follow up;” nobody did. Not big deal at all.

This morning I received a Hilton email inviting me to take a survey about my stay. “Great,” I thought, “I’ll take their survey and mention the wake-up call slipup, as I’m curious how quickly they follow up.”

I stuck with the survey all the way to the end. The survey ran 21 screens (!) and took ten minutes. I suspect my survey went longer as I clicked “Yes” to “Did you have any problems with THIS stay?” Most annoying? There was no free text box to enter a comment. I took the survey just to mention the wake-up non-call, and wasn’t able to.

Hilton had a chance to use this survey to increase my respect for their brand. To do this, they should have used a short survey — three fast screens, tops. They could have included a free text comment box: “Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about your stay?” The survey could have thanked me for staying with them. And they could have sent a fast followup if I indicated a problem.

Your surveys are ambassadors for your brand. Make sure they are are fast, polite, typo-free, include an open-ended comment, are handled quickly, include Reichheld’s Ultimate Question –and please, keep them short!